The debate among evangelical Christians over Darwin’s theory of evolution has returned to front stage this summer with the publication of two separate cover stories on the issue by leading Christian magazines. Christian news magazine World has announced that it will name two books critiquing “theistic evolution” as its “Books of the Year” in its upcoming July 2 issue. World called the evolution debate in churches and religious colleges “the biggest current battle both among Christians and between Christian and anti-Christian thought.” And, in its June cover story, Christianity Today reported on how Christian proponents of Darwin are challenging historic beliefs about Adam and Eve. One of the two books honored by World is God and Evolution: …
Discovery Institute invites you to the Northwest Premiere of Darwin’s Heretic, plus Q&A with Author Michael Flannery, Tuesday May 24th at the Washington State History Musuem. One of the most renowned biologists of the nineteenth century, Alfred Russel Wallace shares credit with Charles Darwin for developing the theory of evolution by natural selection. Yet one part of Wallace’s remarkable life and career has been completely ignored: his eventual embrace of intelligent design. Come learn about Wallace’s fascinating journey of discovery at the world premiere of a 21-minute documentary titled Darwin’s Heretic, followed by Q&A with University of Alabama Professor Michael Flannery, author of the acclaimed new biography, Alfred Russel Wallace: A Rediscovered …
A decade after his book challenged the Darwinian stories told to students and helped change textbooks in science classrooms around the country, Jonathan Wells is back to smash one of evolution's last remaining icons: the myth of junk DNA.
You’d have to call an awful lot of prominent scientists ID supporters. A favorite Darwinist conspiracy theory is to claim that education policies requiring critical analysis of evolution are simply a guise for teaching intelligent design (ID). The Knoxville News Sentinel went off the rails on exactly such a conspiracy rant, misrepresenting Discovery Institute’s position on science education, and misrepresenting the current academic freedom legislation being debated in the Tennessee legislature. Like most conspiracy theorists, the editors at the News Sentinel missed the facts in scrambling for what they want to be the case. Specifically, they missed the fact that there are big differences between teaching evolution critically and teaching alternatives to evolution, such as …
As science has progressed, scientists have realized the cell is more complex they they’d ever imagined. What is behind the origins of the cell’s complexity? What naturalistic theories have been proposed? What is the possibility of the precise genetic information in DNA evolving by chance? Watch as Stephen Meyer answers these and other …
The John Ankerberg Show will launch this weekend a multi-part series examining the science behind origin of life theories and featuring Dr. Stephen C. Meyer. In four television programs beginning Sunday night, Feb. 27th at 9 PM EST on Daystar and Sky Angel at 11 PM EST across the US and over 200 nations worldwide, join Dr. John Ankerberg as he interviews Dr. Meyer. Go here for a full schedule for both cable and local channels. On this week’s first program: Every person’s body consists of over a trillion cells. Almost every one of these cells includes a DNA molecule. What is DNA? Why is it so special? What does it do? Where did the digital code embedded in DNA originate? Why does the specified information in DNA point to a designing intelligence? Dr. Meyer provides a nice …
Philosopher Jay Richards has published an interesting piece about IBM’s Watson computer trouncing Jeopardy champs looking at the consternation this caused for some people. Computers are becoming more powerful at an ever-increasing rate, but will they ever become conscious? Artificial intelligence guru Ray Kurzweil thinks so and argues that someday we will “download” our software (our minds) and “upgrade” our hardware (our bodies) to become immortal. So, Richards was able to get Kurzweil to debate the issue. He edited the book …
With David Coppedge’s case being just the latest, there is a long line of Darwin doubters who have been discriminated against. David Klinghoffer has a published a piece at NRO’s The Corner, Klinghoffer writes: This is no isolated incident. An enormous, largely hidden transformation has taken place in what we mean when we speak of “science.” For centuries, the free and unfettered scientific enterprise was fueled by a desire to know the mind of God. “The success of the West,” writes historian Rodney Stark in his important book The Victory of Reason, “including the rise of science, rested entirely on religious foundations, and the people who brought it about were devout Christians.” Now, increasingly, voicing such a desire is likely to get …
According to the Pasadena Star News: A computer administrator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who was laid off last week plans to add retaliation charges – and a possible free speech violation claim – to a pending discrimination suit against his former employer, an attorney said Wednesday. You can read the full PSN story here. Please call (preferably) or at least email Charles Bolden, NASA’s administrator, to express your outrage at the fact that Coppedge was fired. Here’s the contact information: phone: 202-358-1010 and email: charles.bolden@nasa.gov. For more background on the Coppedge case go …
In this clip, Dr. Stephen Meyer, author of Signature In The Cell, discusses the proposal of some theistic evolutionists that all of God's design of the world must have been "front-loaded" at the beginning of the universe.
At Biologic Institute’s website Ann Gauger has posted a piece about the new peer-reviewed article in BIO-Complexity : In the recent past, several papers have been published that claim to demonstrate that biological evolution can readily produce new genetic information, using as their evidence the ability of various evolutionary algorithms to find a specific target. This is a rather large claim. It has thus fallen to others in the scientific or engineering community to evaluate these published claims. How well do these algorithms model biology? How exactly was the work done? Do the results make sense? Are there unexamined variables that might affect the interpretation of results? Are there hidden sources of bias? Are the conclusions justified or do they go beyond the scope of what …
Michael Behe has just wrapped up a speaking tour of the UK. Finishing it off over the weekend was a lecture at a conference at the Oxford Brookes University, and now a short column in The Guardian responding to Andrew Brown. My contention is that ‘the purposeful arrangement of parts’ to achieve a specific purpose is the criterion that enables us to recognise design. I argued that the conclusion of design in the bacterial flagellum and in many other biological systems is no different from discerning it for a mousetrap or a Ford Mondeo. So what makes Intelligent Design fundamentally different from Darwinism? The Darwinian view which dominates biology holds that the design we all see in life is merely illusory and that life is essentially a blind and purposeless phenomenon. …
Francis Collins is one of the world’s most prominent theistic evolutionists, and now a prominent piece of President Obama’s government. In this clip, God and Evolution contributors and other scholars respond to Francis Collins’ defense of theistic evolution in his book The Language of God. In his book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (2006) and other writings and interviews, Collins has described the paths that led him from atheism to religious belief and from an impatience with “messy” biology and a preference for the pristine realms of physics and chemistry to a fascination with DNA, RNA, and “gene-hunting.” Much of Collins’s case for Darwinian evolution is based on so-called “junk DNA.” This is …
Biochemist and CSC Fellow Michael Behe engaged in a lively radio debate with Keith Fox a British biochemist and theistic evolutionist. Premiere Radio describes it this way: Michael Behe is professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University, Pennsylvania and the founder of the modern Intelligent Design movement. His book “Darwin’s Black Box” ignited the controversy 14 years ago when it claimed that certain molecular machines and biological processes are “irreducibly complex” and cannot be explained by Darwinian evolution. His new book “The Edge of Evolution” takes his conclusions further, arguing that the Darwinian processes of random mutation and natural selection are incapable of producing the variation and complexity we see in most of life. So can …
This interview with Dr. Stephen Meyer about his book Signature in the Cell was conducted some time ago, but is a very good introductory discussion of DNA manipulation, cellular engineering and attempts to create living cells with computer assembled DNA at its …
Biologic Institute’s Doug Axe has just responded to SMU lecturer John Wise’s attacks on the presentations at last week’s 4 Nails in Darwin’s Coffin event. As responses are published we will be archiving them at that page. I was among the speakers at an event held at Southern Methodist University last week . The purpose was to give students and others a glimpse of the growing scientific case against Darwin’s theory, so the talks were tailored to a non-technical audience. Faculty members were welcome too, of course, and I’m told that a few were in attendance. Attesting to this, their denouncements began surfacing online shortly afterward . It’s all very familiar. When you persist in challenging a cherished tradition like Darwinism, you come to …